


scarcely the beginning

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danarius will come, but in the meantime there are moments just enough to give him reason to stay beyond revenge - Donnic finishing his shift and always a ready distraction to Fenris’ insomnia; Merrill sending him yet another snapchat of the flowers she’s got on her kitchen bench; Isabela likely not as drunk as she’s pretending to be in her texts. Moments, he’s realising, are really just people.</p><p>-</p><p>Isabela bumps her hip into Fenris’. ‘Learn to read, elf. Then we can talk romance.’</p><p>‘Oh, and not before?’</p><p>‘No, no romance now,’ Merrill interrupts. ‘We need to go kill Tal-Vashoth.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	scarcely the beginning

Fenris runs his fingers over the titles. There are so many. He knows some of them are Varric’s, but only a scant few. The rest have names he had never heard or could never pronounce, and the letters are all in shapes he cannot fathom.

Reading has never been his forte, and here they use a syllabary entirely at odds with the alphabet of the Imperium. What words he can recognise - his own name, his former master’s, a few countries, and a few choice sentences mostly found in street signs - are never seen here, not in the same shape.

‘You can borrow one, if you like,’ Hawke says, returning. Fenris spins, feeling guilty for prying even though he cannot read the words he was looking at. ‘Borrow several, if you like. Just write the titles down. Or take a picture and send it to me. Isabela borrows them all the time. Really, it’s for the best,’ she continues. ‘There’s not much space left.’ And, true, the shelves are full to bursting and there’s a small stack on the carpet.

‘Perhaps another time,’ Fenris says.

‘Here, try this one,’ Hawke says. ‘I reckon you’ll like it.’ Fenris flips it open; he’s seen Aveline do much the same thing when she finds a new book, and copying is all Fenris has in this regard. ‘Keep it as long as you need,’ Hawke says. ‘Maker knows there’s not a lot of time for reading these days. Anyway,’ Hawke says, remembering the whole purpose of Fenris’ visit. ‘It’s finished.’

She’s holding Fenris’ gun. The thing has a few runes set into it now, courtesy of Sandal. Fenris is relieved to feel the weight is no different, even if the firepower has changed drastically, and the aim is going to far exceed anything he could ever train for.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘Sandal does this for the joy of it,’ Hawke says. ‘I don’t think I could pay him even if he knew what money was.’

‘Hawke,’ Fenris says, warningly.

‘Fenris,’ Hawke teases back. ‘Honestly, one time I tried to give him a honey bun in return and he just kind of looked at it.’

Fenris promises himself to endeavour to find something to repay the dwarf, no matter what Hawke tries to insist.

Hawke looks at him, clucks her tongue, and reaches up the shelf again. ‘Try this one on for size.’ She shoves another book at Fenris, who has little choice but to take it. ‘Now get out of here,’ Hawke says, ‘before I give you more.’

 

-

 

He had not come to Kirkwall expecting to stay, but stay he does. Danarius will come, but in the meantime there are moments just enough to give him reason to stay beyond revenge - Donnic finishing his shift and always a ready distraction to Fenris’ insomnia; Merrill sending him yet another snapchat of the flowers she’s got on her kitchen bench; Isabela likely not as drunk as she’s pretending to be in her texts. Moments, he’s realising, are really just people.

He’s still got the books on the crooked cheap picnic table he didn’t actually buy. He thinks of them guiltily, and wonders occasionally where he might go to learn to read. Of course he could simply tell Hawke. The matter of language alone would work as a reason: he simply does not know this method of writing. Give him letters, give him harsh lines that changed only a little from when they were meant for little beyond being carved into stone, then perhaps he’d have a firm footing.

He’s opened the books, and seen weird shapes that seem closer to pictures than letters. He has no idea where he could even begin. It’s not giving up to leave the problem for later, not when there’s so much else to do.

 

-

 

Anders jogs up the cellar stairs and trips on the rug in Hawke’s hallway. Why anyone requires a rug over a carpet is a thing he hasn’t quite figured out; he blames it mostly on Hawke’s wealth and leaves it at that.

‘If that’s an intruder I’ll have you know I’m in the shower!’ Hawke’s voice is loud, though it echoes a little from the bathroom. ‘I’ll be out in a moment to give you your what-for!’

Anders laughs, goes to the freezer to find the ice cream, and falls into the dent in the couch still left there by his own arse from last night.

‘Oh, it’s only you,’ Hawke says, rubbing her hair dry with a towel. ‘I was all fired up to do some serious damage. Getting bored, sitting in my own riches.’

‘It’s disgusting,’ Anders agrees. He cannot imagine Hawke could ever get bored. If she knows what the feeling is it's only to crush it immediately with making excitement in some form or other. He drops the spoon into the now-empty container and grins at the horrified expression on Hawke’s face.

‘Did you eat it all?’ she asks.

Anders stretches out, feeling a lot like a cat about to purr. Belly full and in a warm apartment, really all he wants to do is wash off and go to sleep. ‘Yeah,’ he grins. ‘I did.’

‘That was mine! And bloody expensive.’

‘Not my fault you buy the fancy vegan shit,’ Anders retorts. Anders isn’t vegan but he loves coconut, while Hawke cannot have lactose unless she fancies feeling like all of her insides are trying to crawl out of her body via her arse. She tells Anders this, loudly, and punctuated with slaps on Anders’ legs, ending it all with wondering why she ever asked Anders to live with her in the first place.

‘You’re rich, what’s your problem?’ Anders asks. They have this argument as often as Hawke buys ice cream and Anders eats it all. It’s an easy argument to have, and falls even more easily into conversation of other matters, and then falls away for each of them to go to their respective beds.

Hawke’s is not cold: her dog sleeps on it, sprawls on the half meant for another person. Another human, if her mother had any say, but she doesn’t have any say in anything at all, so Hawke stretches out a hand to the cold pillow and wishes an awful lot.

 

-

 

Fenris rings Hawke’s doorbell again, to no avail. A woman walking past gives him a pointed glare and tells him that the servant’s entrance is around the corner, but he’s used to that sort of thing. Too elvish for this neighbourhood to greet him with a smile and welcome him into their parlour like a proper guest.

But Hawke is answering neither her door nor her phone, so at a loss about what to occupy his time and absolutely disinterested in the idea of returning to the mansion he has claimed as a house, but not a home, he takes out his phone, and considers.

Isabela is busy, he knows as much from her sending a photo of her lock-picking set - and won’t Aveline be thrilled for that snap, since she’s at work and has had words with Isabela about this sort of thing. Varric and Merrill and Anders, they’re all off doing Maker-knows-what. Fenris had bowed off claiming a headache, which was only slightly true then and is very true now.

Still, he has no desire to do the sensible thing; that is, he has no desire to go home and sleep it off.

His eyes light on Sebastian’s number. Fenris was given his phone by Varric; it’s a hand-me-down, several models out of date, but Varric had grown tired of Fenris being so archaically contactable. Sebastian never answers his phone, or even seems to remember it exists, so Fenris puts his own into his pocket and stalks off through Hightown to find the Priest.

The Chantry is still without being silent. There is music from somewhere: the echo of singers practising their Chant, or perhaps Brothers and Sisters in the garden humming to their work.

Fenris pauses at the entrance to take in the sight of it all. Red and gold, more wealth and power in this symbol than he has seen anywhere south of Tevinter. It is a heady sight, and Fenris cannot help but want to worship it. How easy, how relaxing it must be to give oneself up to a cause bigger than oneself.

But Fenris only prays long enough that his eyes dip closed; his weight does not stay long enough to make the carpet dent at all.

Sebastian greets him with obvious glee. ‘Thank the Maker you’re here,’ he says, and seems to pause long enough to do just that, one hand on Fenris’ elbow to guide him away from the alcove. A man watches them go.

‘Who’s that?’ Fenris asks, curious who has Sebastian in this mood.

‘That,’ Sebastian shudders. ‘Maker says love them all, but not that one. He comes every day to make us explain the most basic of the Chant to him. Again, and again. I would not mind if I didn’t know he’ll ask me the same thing tomorrow.’

‘Poor, poor Chantry boy,’ Fenris croons.

‘You need to stop spending time with Isabela,’ Sebastian says, but he leads Fenris into one of the halls where they can talk in the pretence of it being Chantry work, but the closest they come is Sebastian’s occasional breath of blessing about another dead person in one of Fenris’ tales.

‘She keeps you busy, Hawke does,’ Sebastian says, when Fenris is running his tongue over his teeth wondering where his headache’s fled to.

‘Idle hands,’ he muses in return.

‘You enjoy the work?’ It’s not a question Fenris has been asked. Over two years in the city and only now does he pause to consider it.

‘It is murder,’ he hazards, wary who he is speaking too.

‘Only when it needs to be,’ Sebastian says. But he’s travelled with Hawke, and knows as well as Fenris. It’s murder often as it needs to be, sure, but it needs to be more than most of the time.

‘I think it’s good work,’ Fenris decides. He hasn’t answered the question. ‘I enjoy it. Perhaps that’s a sin.’

‘The Maker made mages and templars alike,’ Sebastian says, mildly.

They are all so young, so innocent.

Anders still eats all of Hawke’s ice cream, still leaves his socks on the floor like a child.

 

-

 

They get home together, Hawke shaking empty shells out of her shotgun into the flowerpots by the front door while Anders unlocks it. It’s nice, this is, almost like having a brother again.

Hawke _refuses_ to feel guilty about that thought. She falls onto the couch and demands into the cushion that Anders make her tea.

‘Coffee,’ Anders says. ‘We still have to go help Isabela.’

‘Oh, hang Isabela,’ Hawke says, with feeling. ‘She can get herself out of trouble for once.’ Despite that complaint she takes the coffee when it’s pressed into her hand.

‘Boots off the couch,’ Anders says, a teasing grin as he shoves at Hawke’s feet to make space for himself. ‘You’re as bad as that elf. Dirt everywhere.’

‘It’s my couch,’ Hawke grouses, for all that she obeys. ‘And Fenris never gets dirt anywhere.’

‘Quick to pick an elf,’ Anders says. ‘Perhaps I meant Merrill, or that housekeeper of yours.’

‘Orana? I hardly think she spews dirt around the place,’ Hawke retorts with a haughty sort of sneer that’s completely ruined by the way she’s stretched out on the couch, blood splattered just under her jaw.

‘Speak of the devil,’ Anders says, the doorbell sounding louder than usual because of the hour.

‘It’s open!’ Hawke bellows.

‘It shouldn’t be,’ Fenris says, stepping through. ‘Imagine if someone unsavoury came in. Oh, don’t worry, he’s already here.’ He gives Anders a grin like he’s been thinking that one up for days, and Anders gives a snarky kind of smirk back, because _he’s_ the one sitting on Hawke’s couch drinking out of one of Hawke’s mugs while _Fenris_ only has a nose gone pink from the cold and Hawke looking adoringly upwards at him.

So perhaps Anders isn’t winning that, but it’s not exactly a competition. Maybe it used to be, but now it’s a competition out of habit only. Fenris would win - will win, it’s only a matter of time - except that the game’s changed. Anders has a friend and doesn’t care to angle for anything else.

‘You got Isabela’s text?’

‘I got Aveline’s text,’ Fenris says. ‘Isabela is mad at me.’ He sits at the edge of the armchair, better for Hawke’s dog to come demand a pat.

Ugly giant thing, Anders thinks, but he thinks it fondly.

‘What did you do to Isabela?’ Hawke asks.

Fenris starts to roll his eyes before remembering that Anders in the room and it won’t do to appear so jovial. ‘I borrowed one of her guns.’ Anders sniggers. Fenris turns a stern glare on him before continuing. ‘I informed her of this, but it appears she neglected to listen to my voicemail.’ Truly he doesn’t mind. It’s this sort of petty hilarity, a useless made-up argument for want of anything more serious to come between them, that makes him glad for Isabela. She’ll petulantly declare him her worst enemy and ten minutes later be rewording a song to be all about him.

‘You’re coming on this mad venture, though?’ Hawke presses. Fenris spreads his hands out, gesturing slightly at himself. The dog is immediately irritated by the lack of attention and shoves his face into Fenris’ lap.

‘Why else would I be here?’ Fenris asks, and immediately regrets it. There’s lots of reasons he’d be there, but with Anders in the room, Anders on the other end of the couch Hawke is so elegantly sprawled across, he cannot talk about any of those reasons.

Hawke finishes her coffee in a flourish, and leaves the empty mug on the coffee table.

There’s no tv, only the bookshelves, which serve as a kind of solemn reminder of Fenris’ failings each time he visits. Yet, he visits all the same, despite Anders, despite the books, despite the neighbours thinking he’s not worth the decoration adorning the front step. And despite all this he follows Hawke out of the house, the dog bumping his thigh in hope of more petting, Anders behind locking the mansion door.

‘Snap from Merrill,’ Aveline says, meeting them in the square. The timer’s gone on Aveline's, so Hawke checks hers.

‘Maker,’ she sighs. ‘Why do these two… Who introduced them? I will take that person and wring their neck!’

‘It was you,’ Anders says through a giggle that erupts when he checks his own phone.

Hawke checks that both her guns are loaded. ‘Let’s blow this fucker.’

Anders only giggles again, and even Fenris snorts at that one.

‘I loathe you both,’ Hawke declares, and takes the lead beside Aveline, who was good enough to hide her smirk behind her hand.

 

-

 

It’s Donnic that suggests it, or, it’s Aveline who suggests it to Donnic while Donnic and Fenris are peeling vegetables for dinner, and the cat fawns over Fenris.

Their cat has taken a liking to Fenris’ feet, of all things. He wonders if this is going to be the way of it: animals falling over themselves to adore him. He doesn’t mind, except that she’s licking the bone of his ankle now, and it tickles.

He tried to complain, and Donnic only told him to wear shoes.

‘Why don’t you try a course down at the community college?’ Aveline asks Donnic. 'A night class?' She’s halfway between uniform and pyjamas. Her first night off in a week, and Donnic’s due to go out the moment dinner is done. A miserable life, Fenris thinks sympathetically. He could not stand having Hawke alone for only a few hours.

A stupid thought; he immediately criticises himself for it. There is no having Hawke.

He still has Hawke’s books, unread, untouched. He dusts them out of guilt, but only as often as he remembers. They’re more than just an inability to read, they’re an entire background to Fenris that Hawke doesn’t know. Not exactly. Not enough. A sentence of explanation is not enough to explain how deep the scars go.

‘I’ve looked, love,’ Donnic says. He sweeps the chopped carrot into the steamer. ‘Nothing that will fit around my hours.’

‘They must have something,’ Aveline huffs.

‘Something for what?’ Fenris asks, more to stave off Aveline’s propensity to huff for far longer than any situation warrants.

‘I want to get my forensics certification,’ Donnic says.

‘It means he’ll be able to do actual detective work,’ Aveline interrupts. She’s always in such a hurry to show off on the behalf of other people.

‘There’s night school?’ Fenris asks.

‘At the community college,’ Aveline confirms. ‘They do night classes in a lot of things.’ She rifles through the stack of papers in front of her and comes up with a brochure. Of course, Fenris cannot read it.

He looks at the brochure being waved in his face, and braces himself on the bench. ‘Is there one for reading?’

Aveline stutters a moment. ‘…You can’t…?’

Having washed his hands, Donnic dries them on his pants and takes the brochure off his wife. ‘Probably,’ he says, assertive where Aveline has suddenly fumbled.

‘I saw one,’ she says, managing to get her shock together. ‘Near the back.’

Donnic flips the pages, talking as he does. ‘I suppose our language is different to what you grew up with. Common isn’t your first tongue is it?’

Honestly, Fenris has no idea. He could have grown up fluent in qunlat for all he knows. ‘Tevene is written differently,’ he hazards. Perhaps he could tell them the actual truth, but he doesn’t. Not that he has anything against them knowing, only, he thinks that perhaps they should not be the first to be told.

Husband and wife pour over the brochure - eventually Aveline slaps Donnic’s wrist in a friendly sort of fashion and she goes to get the laptop, far easier to use a search function than to peruse paper - while Fenris finishes making their dinner for them. By the time Donnnic is properly in his uniform and Aveline fully in her pyjamas, Fenris is signed up to learn how to read.

 

 -

 

Merrill skips into Fenris’ mansion like she owns the place. Sometimes, in tipsy moments of wandering imagination, Fenris gives in to the images of Varric’s nicknames and pictures her trailing small hurricanes of flowers.

‘Hello?’ she yells up the winding stairs. ‘Are you here?’

‘You could call,’ Fenris huffs. He’s midway into dressing, and he’s got the library website up trying to wrangle through it to figure out how to get a card. A difficult thing made easier by the fact that his computer can read everything out loud to him. In Tevene, even, if he were in the mood for ever hearing that language again.

Perhaps he could ask someone, anyone, actually, for assistance in this matter, but his friends are prone to teasing and this is still a sensitive area.

Merrill, though, she does not tease. Fenris isn’t sure she knows how. At the very least, she doesn’t understand the why. She sees the open window and leans in close, fully ignoring Fenris who has yet to pull his leggings on all the way.

‘You want books? Why don’t you just ask? I have lots of books -’

‘Yours are all elven,’ he says. Another language he doesn’t know, and he has no idea what shape those letters would take.

‘No, I suppose you’re not interested,’ she says. She’s already opening up another tab to check her Facebook, distracted. ‘Hawke has lots of books, you could ask her.’

‘I need simpler books,’ he tells her.

‘Oh!’ She flicks through the tabs he has open; a reflex, idle fingers tapping a tune on the table. She doesn’t do more than glance at any of the videos he’s got waiting to be watched. ‘Kids books? Sebastian probably has hundreds of those. A Chantry should, shouldn’t it?’

He sits down on the bed behind her to begin doing her hair: this is the reason she comes past, and beyond the first time she never asked again. That first time was entirely an accident, her asking the question before she’d realised who she was asking it of. He knows how to braid hair, and her hair is compliant enough.

‘Then we’ll go to the Chantry,’ she says.

‘We have to see Isabela,’ he reminds her, a stern flick to the point of her ear to keep her from twisting around to face him.

‘We’ll go to Isabela and then the Chantry,’ Merrill corrects.

Business with Isabela takes far longer than a mere ‘and then’. They are nearly set on fire by a merchant bold enough to hire apostates as guards. The treasure was perhaps worth the risk; Fenris didn’t really do more than glance into one of the boxes before telling Isabela to put it on his tab. He has no time for trinkets, and trusts her enough to wait for the loot to be liquidated before demanding his share.

They finish late, get a late dinner at a street-vendor and eat it walking through the market, Isabela holding hers with one hand so she can use the other to pick-pocket. She is trying to teach Merrill, but despite Merrill’s dainty hands and light footsteps she’s not very good at it.

Food done and night young they follow Isabela without question. They do not even pause to consider the sense of taking as many weapons as they carry into the club.

Loud, pounding music that vibrates Fenris’ toes, him holding his jacket over his guns so they aren’t stopped at coat-check. A moment of wondering if Isabela perhaps planned this - she’s in clothes far too shiny to go smuggler-hunting, and they only look better slightly burned by magic and stinking like blood half-heartedly washed out in the sink of a public bathroom. Foresight like that is likely too complicated for Isabela, though, who seems to step out of her room every day set on adventure no matter the form.

He is dazzled a moment by the way the lights turn the sweat on her bare arms into glitter.

‘Shots!’ Merrill yells into their ears, dragging them each by the wrist to the bar where she makes frantic gestures. Fenris pays, since Merrill has no money and Isabela suddenly cannot hear anything, especially not the price.

Throat on fire he allows himself to be danced with, or danced near, Merrill forgetting them both in sheer joy at the idea of moving.

Isabela puts both her hands on Fenris’ hips, grinds up behind him, and he can feel from the weight of her that she’s doing this for the attention of someone else. He doesn’t care. Strange, maybe, but he doesn’t. His fringe is wet from sweat and blood and when he licks his lips he can taste the cloying sweetness of whatever Merrill urged them to drink.

He has no idea how long it takes before he stumbles out, toe catching on a cobble and him grabbing Isabela to stay upright. Isabela giggles loud into his ear, and takes Merrill's hand. 

'Tomorrow?' she asks Fenris. He shrugs. He doesn't know; a wonder in and of itself. There are no plans, nothing keeping him. He will do whatever he likes. 

'Sure,' he says. 'Tomorrow.'

 

-

 

Four texts is what Hawke wakes up to, three of them from Anders, one of them arriving at 7:06am and thus waking her up.

She meets Anders in the kitchen and waves her phone in his face. ‘I was right down the hall!’

Anders blinks serenely at her.

Hawke opens the fridge, picks out the empty carton, and slams it onto the bench with a pointed glare. ‘ _You_ can pick up more milk,’ Hawke says. Anders’ impression of an innocent person only intensifies.

‘Fuck off,’ Hawke half yells, and goes back to bed.

She wakes at the far more sensible hour of approximately midday. The unread text is from Merrill, a photo of her and Isabela and Merrill together at the club. She smiles at it, yawns, and decides to curry favour with Varric by bugging him into giving her some work.

 

-

 

Fenris had worried that he would be obvious in the class, a ex-slave unable to read, but Kirkwall’s Kirkwall and half the people there are citizens with no more than a few words of written Common under their belt. It’s a mish-mashed class: there are supervisors wandering between the tables, but mostly he is left alone with sheets of paper and a cassette player to teach him.

Nerves had left him after the first class where, afterwards, as everyone began packing up, the woman next to him was telling her neighbour that she was taking the class to learn another language to better her chances of being employed as an architect. Her neighbour agreed, saying she was a cultural heritage student and was learning qunlat to help that.

So Fenris, an elf from Tevinter, fit in more than he stood out. Comforting, really, to be more same than different, but then he leaves class to find Hawke and Varric waiting impatiently outside his mansion door.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Hawke asks. ‘I texted you.’

It was the seventh reading class; Fenris now knows the symbols well enough to manage through the colloquialisms of Hawke’s texting style. He still needs his phone to read it out to him, but there’s more understanding than there was before.

‘Get your gun,’ Varric says. ‘We’re going mage-hunting.’

 

-

 

Another day waking up closer to midafternoon than morning. Isabela rolls around in bed, stretching, feeling the itch of the sheets and wondering if she should wash them. If she should do that now or wait a little in the hopes of running into that cute dwarf. Her good-morning, just-woke-up snapchat picture is mere reflex at this point, her pausing only long enough to readjust the unbrushed mass of curls around her shoulders in something close to photoworthy.

Merrill is waiting for her outside her apartment, the tree of the alienage looking sadly sick as ever. The weather has gone spontaneously warm, and Merrill’s in one of her knitted dresses, the one where the pattern’s all funny because Merrill got tired halfway through following instructions. Her legs are bare and toes newly painted. Isabela kisses her on the nose out of pure exultation at how cute Merrill looks, and they go to find Fenris.

‘Fasta vass!’ Fenris yells, scarcely noticing them. He kicks the dishwasher.

‘Need a new one?’ Isabela asks, leaning her elbows on the counter. The kitchen is mansion-sized, enough space to prepare a length dinner for at least two dozen guests. The dishwasher itself is industry-standard, which is most of the problem. Fixing it costs rather more money than Fenris can be arsed spending on the thing.

Fenris only just then seems to notice them. He flicks a strand of hair back behind the high point of an ear. ‘No,’ he growls. He snatches his gun from the umbrella holder by the door, air of his movement vibrating a spiderweb that’s so settled there’s dust caught in the strands.

‘It’s a lovely day,’ Isabela says, as if weather would ever coax Fenris out of a mood.

‘A beautiful day,’ Merrill agrees. ‘We should do something. Oh, Fenris! We should go to the Chantry and get those books.’

‘Books?’ Isabela asks.

Fenris hesitates. He woke up on the wrong side of bed, cold water in his shower and a tear in his favourite pair of leggings. He’s not happy to be awake. ‘I’m learning how to read.’ He says it grudgingly, daring Isabela to make any kind of comment.

‘Oh, good,’ she exclaims. ‘Someone other than Hawke to talk stories with.’

‘What about Varric?’ asks Merrill. ‘He tells stories all the time.’

‘He tells _tales_ ,’ Isabela corrects. ‘He’s too busy running the mafia to bother with books anymore.’ She sniffs, a feigning of sadness. ‘I miss the old days when things were simpler.’ She bumps her hip into Fenris’. ‘Learn to read, elf. Then we can talk romance.’

‘Oh, and not before?’ he asks back - teasing, really, but slightly not.

‘No, no romance now,’ Merrill interrupts. ‘We need to go kill Tal-Vashoth.’

They could have told him that before he went leaping out the door without his kevlar on, but he’s not about to ask them to bring Anders. Anyway, any blood he spills can be used by Merrill to keep them safe, so it’s like a circle, really.

Isabela says no romance, which is true, because romance isn’t four bloodied people sitting on plastic seats in a fast-food joint. Hawke steals Merrill’s chips in an idle sort of way; Fenris isn’t even sure if either of them realise Hawke’s not eating off her own tray.

Fenris gets home feeling too awake to go to bed, and is right about to ring Hawke when she rings him.

‘Bored,’ she says. ‘Come over,’ and hangs up.

Merrill and Isabela are already there, even though they left together and in the opposite direction. A movie, popcorn, Fenris trying to get over his discomfort at how close everyone is by scrunching his eyes shut and trying to relax into where everyone is touching him. The couch is too small even for three, and especially for four, even if two of them are elves.

Not exactly the way anyone who’d seen them earlier would expect them to finish their day. More a pile of pliant cats than warriors, but Fenris keeps his gun within arm’s reach and Isabela has to keep Merrill’s hands from going too close to particular parts of her for fear of the knives hidden slicing off unwitting fingers.

‘Bed,’ Hawke groans, eventually. The credits are over and the menu is back on, music looping and looping until it’s beginning to grate. Fenris hears the noise of a kiss, of Merrill whispering ‘romance, now’, answered only by Isabela’s soft chuckle.

Fenris isn’t sleeping, for all that his eyes are closed, and he takes advantage of the newly vacated couch to stretch out. He flexes his toes, arches his back. There’s a soft ‘oh’ from beyond him and he flicks his eyes open.

Hawke stares at him.

The plan, inasmuch as Fenris had planned this, was to finish the books and bring them back. Somehow the conversation would turn to a revelation, ending in a kiss and a promise and proper understanding.

A fantasy, but he’d always thought the fantasy was in the reciprocation.

‘Bed,’ Hawke says. Her voice cracks over the word. She holds out a hand and helps him up, and he follows without a question.

 

-

 

There’s a headache lingering at her temples that eases the moment Merrill slips in beside her. Hawke’s frowning at Varric’s laptop, not quite certain what she’s looking at.

‘I’ve not the head for politics,’ she says, rubbing at her own, trying to ease her headache as much as trying to make a point. ‘Just tell me what to hit.’

‘Isabela’s looking for you,’ Merrill says. Isabela is down at the bar and not actually looking; Isabela knows where Hawke is, and is merely getting them drinks. She brings Hawke coffee instead of a beer. As always, she seems to know what Hawke wants without actually asking. She kisses Hawke on the neck just behind her ear, getting a raised eyebrow from Varric.

‘You up for it?’ Varric asks.

‘Let me drink this,’ Hawke says. The coffee will help, and being outside will help. Four days since she’s heard from Fenris. Not unusual: they all live in each other’s pockets but there’s enough of them to go round that sometimes they can forget one or another for a week or more at a time. At the moment Hawke is forgetting Anders, whom she hasn’t seen, but she spent the last month scarcely near Merrill and now she’s wearing a jacket that smells like Merrill’s perfume, merely because they have been together so often in the past few days.

Still, she hasn’t heard from Fenris.

‘You, me,’ Hawke pats Merrill’s hand on the table. ‘Varric and Isabela.’

‘Oo, bring Aveline,’ Merrill says. ‘She should come. I haven’t seen her in ages.’ She draws the word out, rolls it over her tongue and drops it out through a wide smile.

‘She might like this one,’ Varric agrees. ‘Almost in her precinct.’

Merrill and Isabela get into a drinking competition, chugging their beers fast as they can while Varric tells Aveline to get her arse down to the Hanged Man. Perhaps not sensible to go into a firefight with Corff’s homemade brew in their bellies, but Isabela’s fought with worse inside her and Merrill doesn’t ever seem to notice alcohol until she’s tripped over her own toes to land on the floor.

Fenris leaves class, his desk-neighbour undeterred by Fenris’ laconic responses and telling him all about herself despite it. He’s interested, truly, but fails to see why he should bother to befriend this woman when there are others who know him more purely than she. His phone is all lit up with the half-dozen messages virtue of Isabela being on Hawke’s team of bandits for the evening. One of them is a photo of Isabela all covered in blood, Merrill beside her grinning widely. Fenris quickly locks the phone before the woman beside him notices.

‘Until next time,’ he nods to her, not wanting to be impolite. She grins like he’s done more than say a simple good night.

 

-

 

Anders opens the door, grunts to see him, and tells him that he’s just on his way out.

‘She’s in the kitchen,’ Anders says, his tone very much begging Fenris to save them all from whatever horror Hawke might concoct.

Fenris was on his way over for sheer distraction; where some might put on a movie to kill a few hours Fenris puts another cartridge of bullets in his pocket and goes to see Hawke.

‘I want lunch,’ he tells her. She is in the middle of putting something into the blender. Save us indeed, he thinks. She’s got her hair tied back, messy, her hoodie surely Anders’, or, at the very least, not her own. ‘Come on,’ he says.

‘We can have lunch here.’

Fenris looks very pointedly at the mess she is making. ‘No,’ he says. ‘We can’t.’

Sebastian is at the diner, but he’s with someone and got his Priest uniform on so they don’t say hello. Instead, Hawke makes faces at him across the way trying to break his concentration on the probably serious spiritual conversation he is having, while Fenris makes apologetic faces and eats a burger.

‘Hmm, did I lend you that book by Harold-whatsit?’ Hawke asks.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Fenris says.

Hawke frowns and finishes her milkshake, straw making that awful sucking noise with nothing left in the glass. ‘It’s missing.’

‘I might,’ he says. He hasn’t read it yet. He’s read the other one. He knows that one's not by Harold-anything; he spent long enough learning the difference between the symbols used for names and the symbols used for words. 

‘I did lend you books, though,’ she says. ‘I remember that.’

‘Two,’ he admits.

‘That must have been bloody ages ago.’

‘I can’t read,’ he blurts.

Any horror he expected isn’t there at all. ‘You could have said.’ Hawke seems almost insulted. ‘I wanted to read that book.’

‘Slaves aren’t allowed to read,’ he continues. ‘I’m learning,’ he adds. ‘I read one of them.’

‘Hmm,’ is all Hawke says. ‘Did you like it?’

‘Not really,’ Fenris admits.

Distraction in the manner of food done with they go out into the streets. Fenris had, again, imagined something far more overwrought than that simple confession. Hawke doesn’t seem to have noticed. Everything is far simpler than it seems once it's out of his head. 

 

-

 

Anders limps, muttering under his breath about blood mages and how dangerous it is to go taking blood from wounded party members.

‘I thought we were friends!’ he grouses, slightly louder, and Merrill growls under her breath at him and puts her hand into Isabela’s out of sheer irritation.

‘I didn’t do it to hurt you!’ she calls back. Her voice is too high-pitched to sound actually angry, which she hates.

‘I want pancakes,’ Hawke says. She’s limping, too. She wants to curse out blood mages and blood magic and all mages and all magic, and also templars and people with guns, but that would alienate most of her friends so instead she talks about food.

‘I want more elfroot potion,’ Anders says. ‘Also lyrium.’ This is said with a pointed glare at Merrill, but she’s walking pinned between Fenris and Isabela so it’s Fenris that catches the look. He glowers.

‘I am not here to sate your desires,’ he retorts.

‘Boys,’ Varric murmurs.

‘Hash browns, too,’ Hawke is saying, desperate to keep the calm. ‘Pancakes covered in raspberries,’ but it’s helping nothing so she changes tack.

‘Like I’d want anything from you,’ says Anders.

‘Chill out, both of you,’ Hawke snaps. ‘There’s both at home.’ Anders grumbles again. ‘Oh, shut up,’ she says. She’s injured, which never puts her in the best mood. Merrill is the only one who goes from regular smiles to face-splitting grins at the sight of blood. Hawke makes a face: blood mages, but Merrill seems to have a handle on what’s she’s doing, which is rather more than she can say of Anders some of the time.

‘There’s also ice cream at home,’ she continues. ‘And bourbon,’ she adds, for the sake of Isabela and Fenris, though it’s Varric that perks up first.

‘You look after us so well,’ Varric says.

‘Someone has to,’ she says. She’s still thinking of pancakes, but Sebastian’s the one the cooks; also, Sebastian is the one who refuses to go on any venture that might see him back at the Chantry after midnight. Apparently he, unlike anyone else Hawke has had the poor sense to befriend, requires full hours of sleep, all strung together in a row. Ridiculous man, really.

Ice cream found and Anders with the tub in hand like all of it’s his, Varric sits on the floor to clean the blood off his beloved gun while the others push their way into the bathroom. It’s not small, but with four people it’s cramped. Fenris sits on the lid of the toilet while Isabela fusses over the cuts on his face. Exploding glass and the like, nothing good happened that night and they won’t even get paid for it.

Hawke fetches the elfroot potion down from the cabinet to pass to Anders, who takes it and retreats like the company in the bathroom is far beyond his measure to bear.

‘Still,’ Hawke says. ‘Gets the blood pumping.’ She sits on the edge of the tub and combs bits of glass out of Merrill’s hair. Chunks of exploded demon too; she grimaces, pulling the wastebasket close with her foot to drop the slimy bits of bedraggled flesh in.

‘Ow,’ Fenris snaps, pointed.

‘Look, sorry, it’s really dug in there,’ Isabela says, fumbling with tweezers to pull glass out of a cut. ‘Can I have some tissue? I can’t see.’

Fenris had his eyes shut tight against the blood running down from his forehead, but all that did was get it caught in the corner of his eye, stinging more painfully than really warranted. ‘I can’t see either,’ he points out, which earns him a mouthful of his own blood.

He can feel her digging beneath his skin, balls his hands into fists on his thighs and grimaces through the ordeal.

‘Ahah!’ she cries. ‘I feel like a proud parent. Look!’ Isabela dabs the blood from the corner of his eye enough that he can squint out to see the long splinter of glass.

‘I’ve finished the class,’ he says, watching her wash off her hands. She picks up the anespetic to dab over the cuts that litter his face.

So distracted, she has no idea where the tangent has come from. ‘Class?’

Merrill pulls away sharply from Hawke. ‘Oh! The reading one!’ Delayed, she clutches at her hair. ‘Ow,’ she says to Hawke.

‘Hold still. Actually, this would probably be better if I just washed it.’

‘I can wash my own hair,’ Merrill says.

‘You can,’ Hawke says. ‘But do you want to?’ In any case, there’s glass enough still caught between the pieces of demon that probably it wouldn’t be wise for unseeing hands to go rubbing in shampoo.

‘So,’ Isabela says, kneeling in front of him again. ‘You proficient at reading, now?’

‘Well enough,’ he says. She pauses, elfroot piled on a bit of tissue to press into the cuts. He looks back, watching her.

‘Alright, then,’ she says, and presses a kiss to his lips. Half a question, half a statement, claiming, declaring. He leans back to better the angle, though all it does is put his forehead in better light to tend to with the elfroot.

‘Oh, good,’ Merrill says, watching them. There’s a breath of _finally_ in there, which Fenris is glad she doesn’t say. There’s no finally about this, or if there is, it’s not because of pointlessly putting it off. He was not born ready for this, and when Hawke leans forward to touch his knee, he gives her the reassurance she asks for.

There is no going to bed immediately, no hurry to explore this change. Varric is sitting with the dog on his lap, and Anders is sprawled with the ice cream more melted than eaten. They sit half on top of each other, aching and awake, no desire to chase after the dreams of the fade.

 

-

 

With the best hand he’s had all afternoon, Fenris is loathe for the distraction that is his ringing phone. Donnic raises his eyebrows; the other guards sigh and lean back to wait.

‘Hawke,’ Fenris says.

‘You answer your phone with that name?’ Isabela says. ‘You two aren’t married, you know. But you kind of are,’ she adds. There’s a grin in her voice. ‘You free? There’s trouble at the Bone Pit.’

Fenris looks at his hand, looks around the people he’s been winning money off, and decides to give them a chance to actually enjoy their day.

‘You off?’ Donnic asks. He looks rather more pleased by that than any friend properly should.

Fenris puts his cards face down on the table, stretching sideways to crack his back. ‘Got a dragon to kill,’ he says. Just another day, he implies with his casual flick of his hair. Nothing much, just a dragon.

Just another day following Hawke.

**Author's Note:**

> If you check out the cutscenes for Varric telling the story there's what looks like writing, but it's all symbols - more hieroglyphics than letters. But I've always imagined Tevene as more Latin, so I have always pretended that Tevinter uses a Latin/Greek-type alphabet while Common is written with a syllabic alphabet, or perhaps it's semanto-phonetic, where the symbols can represent sound and meaning (Chinese is one such system).


End file.
